I Want My Life With You

Scenes from a marriage

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What makes a good marriage?

Clover has been married to Pete for fifteen years. Together they have brought up five children. But for much of that time they have been apart. Now walking into mid-life, for Clover their marriage feels fragile. Many of their peers are divorcing, or opening their marriage, or coming out as polyamorous. When Pete’s work keeps him in Washington DC, Clover packs up her home and children to cross the Atlantic and join him. It is an active commitment to their relationship.

The move, and the apparent gloss of the Washington life surrounding her, forces Clover to reflect on her marriage. So often, what appears from the outside of a relationship is entirely different to what’s going on inside. What are the sacrifices a couple make? Can you grow as an individual, yet remain part of a committed partnership? What do we lose of ourselves?

As she navigates a new country, that is itself in a state of flux and change, Clover explores the emotional landscape of both her marriage, and mid-life, searching for what she finds she needs, and in the end, what she wants.

About Clover Stroud

Clover Stroud is a writer and journalist; she has written for national media since she was twenty-five, and her Substack, ‘The Way Life Feels’, is a bestseller. Her first book, The Wild Other, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Her critically acclaimed second book, My Wild and Sleepless Nights: A Mother’s Story, and third book, The Red of My Blood: A Death and Life Story, were instant Sunday Times bestsellers and rated ‘best books of the year’. Her fourth, A Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go (‘Stroud’s best memoir yet’, Daily Mail) described the year before she and three of her five children joined her husband in Washington DC. She and her family are now back in Oxfordshire.

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